Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to rich Internet applications and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for isolating analytics logic from the content creation in a rich Internet application for efficient data collection.
Description of the Related Art
The rapid proliferation of multimedia content (i.e., user interactive controls and application generated controls that create an exciting and interesting multimedia experience) throughout the Internet was caused by numerous technological innovations. Accordingly, such multimedia content may be referred to as rich Internet content with which users spend a significant amount of time conducting various activities (e.g., surfing educational websites, viewing detailed product demonstrations, accessing digital libraries and participating in expert discussion forums related to the multimedia content). These users often download and view the rich Internet content on various display devices (e.g., a mobile phone, an electronic book reader, a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), a hand-held gaming device and/or the like from various Internet resources (e.g., web pages, multimedia clips and/or content, emails and/or the like).
Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) provide interactive functionality for the rich Internet content. Consequently, RIAs have become a very popular multimedia tool on websites throughout the Internet. An RIA typically is a collection of rich Internet content that is wrapped within programming code to be executed by a playback routine. For example, some RIAs may comprise animations, interfaces, games, video clips, audio clips, and/or other interactive or passive content (referred to herein as “rich Internet content”). In addition, an RIA typically includes program code to instruct a playback routine (referred to as an “RIA Player”) regarding how to display and progress through the content of the RIA. One such RIA Player is a FLASH® player (FLASH is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated) that executes an RIA in the form of a SWF file to present rich Internet content to a viewer. A SWF file format is defined by the SWF File Format specification (version 10) as by Adobe Systems Incorporated of San Jose, Calif.
Web analytics allow marketers and brand managers to collect session-level information about user interaction in a rich Internet application. The analytics provide an understanding of the value of each piece of content. Reports based on user behavior provide marketers with the knowledge necessary to improve marketing campaigns and improve creative content. Marketers select specific user interactions within the RIA content that they wish to track, called event elements. As users navigate through the RIA, the interactions with the event elements are recorded and reported to the marketer. Currently, the analytics solutions for rich Internet applications require the logic for data collection to be coded inside the application during content creation. This approach requires marketers and brand managers to work closely with developers to have the tracking code embedded in the RIA when the content is created. When marketers or brand managers want to change the elements they wish to track in the RIA, they need to work with the developers again, which results in significant overhead related to project planning, approvals, development, testing, acceptance and deployment.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for analytics logic to be isolated from the main content creation and an intuitive interface designed for dynamically changing the tracking preferences.